It’s the very height of summer. So you’re in the mood for something ultra-fresh that won’t bloat you-up like a balloon or put your family into a food coma. It should be healthy, satisfying and something that gives you a reason to visit a farm stand or green grocer.

The topic of gluten-intolerance has been in the news a lot lately, and if you’re like me, you know people struggling with celiac’s disease or with some less chronic sensitivities to gluten. Having friends and family struggling with these conditions can make getting together for summer breakfasts and brunches a little awkward. Given that so many traditional breakfast items are loaded with glutens, one is left with either making several different breakfasts to accommodate the various dietary restrictions of one’s guests or, even worse, forcing gluten-sensitive guests to feel left out by showing up with their own breakfasts-for-one.

When I bring up my seasonal obsession with zucchini – which, incidentally, is in full effect at the moment – I always marvel at how many people describe the delicious summer squash as either tasteless, or perhaps even more astonishingly, as boring and difficult to work with. Tasteless? Boring? Difficult to work with? Hearing those kinds of comments, I instantly know that the people making them are woefully uninitiated in the many sublime pleasures of the deceptively simple vegetable.

Growing up the grandson of a Neapolitan grandmother, I was introduced to zucchini as an ingredient in a multitude of meals at a very early age. When properly prepared, zucchini serves as the basis for an enormous number of mouthwatering dishes. In fact, if anything, the difficulty of working with zucchini is often having too many meal directions to choose from. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, Recipe4Living published a useful piece featuring twelve very enticing no-bake berry desserts. Being in the mood for something cool but luscious for this weekend, I thought three recipes from the article were particularly appealing. Read the rest of this entry »